It’s an old feature, yeah, but for new users of iPhone who aren’t aware of the feature, here’s something to try tonight.

Privacy on the iPhone
A smartphone is a personal device but you’ve got kids, cousins, nephews, friends and relatives peeping into your iPhone – especially if it’s an iPhone 5 and no one around you uses one of them. And in some cases, this can be a little uncomfortable if you’ve got apps that are personal or apps with personal data.

I’ve got this problem where kids play games on the iPhone. I am okay with that but it so happens that the chance of the kids opening and playing around with apps like Mail, WhatsApp etc. are high. What if they open Skype and make a call?

And what about the iPad? It’s almost a family device.

So How to Hide these Apps?
Without a jailbreak, there are two options:

You can hide stock apps (selectively)

You can hide ALL the downloaded apps

If you want to selectively hide particular apps from the iPhone, there are a few jailbreak tweaks that hide particular apps like the Clock, Newsstand etc.

You’ll have to enter the passcode for restrictions (this is different from your iPhone passcode, depending on how you set it up)

Now you can switch off the toggles for apps you don’t want to displayed on the iPhone. These are stock apps.

2. How to Hide Non-stock Apps in iOS 7 (or earlier iOS version) on iPhone or iPad:
Downloaded apps (which you got from the App Store) can be hidden based on their age-restrictions or completely. Here’s the simple step that does it:

Go to Settings

Tap on General

Tap Restrictions

Scroll down to Allowed Content and tap on Apps

Now, you can either choose which type of apps to allow (tap on the particular age group) or just tap Don’t Allow Apps to hide all the apps.

If you hit the home button to check your homescreen, you should find all the downloaded apps hidden.

When you hide apps, they’re just hidden from the iPhone, not deleted. All the installed apps (and the stock apps) are very much still on your iPhone.

When you hide all downloaded apps and then unhide them again, the springboard icons will reset their positions. You can get the older positioning by syncing to iTunes.

Dhvanesh Adhiya is our editor-in-chief and reviewer who takes care of iGeeksBlog.com. He is passionate for wonderful apps that change the way your iPhone interacts in your life.

randall young

There’s another way also… Fill your first page of your home screen up with apps. “make sure you have a folder on the bottom line.” Put the app that you want to hide in the dock. Press and hold the app that you want to hide while double pressing the home button. This will put you in wiggle mode also in multitask mode. Go back to the home screen, open the folder app on the bottom row, the press the home button. Boom! It’s gone. Keep in mind, when you reboot your device, the app comes back.